The Stephen Wolfram Podcast

• Science & Technology Q&A for Kids (and others) [March 7, 2025]

  Stephen Wolfram answers general questions from his viewers about science and technology as part of an unscripted livestream series, also available on YouTube here: https://wolfr.am/youtube-sw-qaQuestions include: ​​Can you talk about lambda calculus? - Any thoughts on numerology? - My current favorite approximation to a constant (e, in this case) is (1 + 9^-4^(7*6))^3^2^85, which uses each of the digits 1–9 only once and is accurate to 18 septillion digits. - Atmospheric noise is about as random as we can get, I think. - How does IBM Watson AI stand against modern LLMs? - Would the LLM have the same reaction time to compete and press the buzzer as humans? - Is it possible someday we may predict the weather years in advance? - Well then, is weather a good random sequence? - How do you calculate wind speed if wind is just a pressure difference? - If the Earth started rotating in reverse, would that have an effect on weather? - What would it take to stabilize the weather (like using wind farms in reverse or controlling ground albedo or atmosphere composition) so that we know it exactly? - Can the Earth's tilt ever be affected? What kind of changes would this cause? - There is a rather large difference between what the ideal climate would be and what changes will mean trouble for us, given our current infrastructure. - Even the weather can't agree on what the weather should be.

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• History of Science & Technology Q&A (March 5, 2025)

  Stephen Wolfram answers questions from his viewers about the history of science and technology as part of an unscripted livestream series, also available on YouTube here: https://wolfr.am/youtube-sw-qaQuestions include: What is the history of game theory? What are some successful and less successful applications of this theory? Can you speak about John Nash's work? Did that have any influence on your automata work? - ​​I wonder if that code by Nash exists anywhere? It would be interesting to read. - Do you view the world as being governed by randomness or order? - Would you ever write a book intended to explain the history of the ruliad/Physics Project? - Have you studied the history of cognitive neurological abilities of scientists throughout the ages, things like long-term memory, imagination, creativity...? - Do scientists invent tools first and then look for a problem to use them on, or do they find a problem first and then invent the tool to crack it? - What is your favorite "age" of science? - How did early mechanical computers like the Babbage Engine influence modern computing? - Do you think Ada would have had more success in science and math today than she did when she was alive? - Would you say you research more of the history of people or history of their projects/research? Which do you find more useful?

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• Business, Innovation and Managing Life (February 26, 2025)

  Stephen Wolfram answers questions from his viewers about business, innovation, and managing life as part of an unscripted livestream series, also available on YouTube here: https://wolfr.am/youtube-sw-business-qaQuestions include: Physicists that "could code" used to be the hot commodity; is it helpful now? Seems like CS/ML people are more in demand than physicists now—why? - ​​I find that building simple frameworks in software GREATLY helps understanding of the underlying material. Mathematics especially, but I don't think it's limited to hard sciences. - I kind of doubt my trying to self-teach cryptanalysis is going to be very transferrable. - Would you consider "science communicator" a career? What skills would be most important? - How would you think about approaching school in the age of AI and LLMS? Should I, as a university student, embrace AI and LLMs? Or should I avoid them to eliminate risks of being too dependent on technology? - I did specialized things for the government and just got laid off. There are no similar jobs in the public sector. How can/should I pivot? - Is it better to stay at one job and "move up the ladder" over decades like our parents did or adopt this trend of staying at a company for no more than three years before salary-shopping elsewhere? - ​​Do you see any solution to the "iron law of oligarchy" on the scale of generations? - Interesting point; so how do we break the mold? I'm northeast England, a deprived region—any advice to get my children (15F, 20F) to realize their potential? - What about economic barriers to "success" and fields where someone can be successful needing expensive education? - What would you say to someone who could change the world but who lacks any resources or academic backing, so nobody wants to help?

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• History of Science & Technology Q&A (February 19, 2025)

  Stephen Wolfram answers questions from his viewers about the history of science and technology as part of an unscripted livestream series, also available on YouTube here: https://wolfr.am/youtube-sw-qaQuestions include: - Can you talk about the history of pi? - "Pi day of the century." - Is pi still being researched today? Or is it a solidified concept? - Was there always a connection between "pi" and "pie"? - Can pi be used for data compression? - Is the only reason pi shows up more than tau because we USE pi more often? - If we used tau, it would have been 24/tau^2 instead of 6/pi^2, right? ​- How was your experience with slide rules? Did Leibniz or Newton use tools like a slide rule? - My 8th-grade (1983-ish) teacher didn't allow calculators, but he let me use my slide rule. ​​- Would you rather be stuck with just a slide rule or just an abacus? - What is your favorite "artifact from the past" that you own... any interesting stories? - What's your favorite artifact from the future? - Many key ideas in computer science existed before we had the hardware to implement them (Turing's computer, neural networks in the 1940s). What ideas today do you think are ahead of their time in the same way? - Technology has progressed at an incredible rate during the last two centuries. That seems quite unusual relative to other periods in history. Are we bound to enter a new era of stagnation or regression? Or can we just keep going? - How would you think about cellular automata if you were born in, say, ancient Greece/Rome or Egypt? Or even the 1800s? - ​​Is there a history of people discovering the concept of the ruliad and thinking about it from a different perspective (mathematical, scientific, religious or otherwise)? - I would be interested in hearing about the bug of Alan Turing. - It seems like our definitions of "science" and "technology" have evolved over the years. Are they historically the same thing?

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• Future of Science and Technology Q&A (February 14, 2025)

  Stephen Wolfram answers questions from his viewers about the future of science and technology as part of an unscripted livestream series, also available on YouTube here: https://wolfr.am/youtube-sw-qaQuestions include: In the spirit of Valentine's Day, what is the future of bionic hearts? Would this be a way to make humans more efficient? - How would you think about a world in which all of the work is done by robots and AI? - Architects using computerized/AI tools will result in less demand for architects overall, thus less people getting to do architecture. - Do you think the current methods of training and using AI/LLM are here to stay for a while, or is there a real possibility of an alternative machine learning approach appearing and being superior and more efficient? - What would you think about spiking neural nets with a new non-differentiable learning algorithm? Is it the path to smarter AI? - ​​I read from an expert that correcting the errors in a later prompt results in more errors. It's better to go back to the original prompt. - Do you or your team actively work on the alignment issues with AI and are you worried about the next 10 years with regard to that? - Do you see a danger in the trend toward anthropomorphic AI and providing AI systems with human-like attributes? - I wonder what will happen when future AI models are trained on material that shows them the actual results of their past actions. - What are some near- and medium-term breakthroughs that could potentially make the creator a trillionaire? Off the top of my head, fusion power, far more efficient batteries or novel propulsion systems.

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